Jailing Muslims, burning Bibles, and forcing monks to wave the national flag: How Xi Jinping is attacking religion in China

China has been increasingly cracking down on Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists.

Authorities are subjecting Muslims to an unprecedented amount of surveillance, shutting down Christian churches, and forcing monks to pledge allegiance to the state.

The officially atheist Chinese Communist Party disapproves of all kinds of grassroots organizations as they are seen to undermine its grip on power.

China is waging an unprecedented war on religion.

Over the past year alone, China has detained Muslims because of their faith, forced Buddhists to pledge allegiance to the Chinese Communist Party, and coerced Christian churches to take down their crosses or shut down.

Chinese authorities have subjected the majority-Muslim Uighur ethnic group, which is based in Xinjiang, to an unprecedented amount of surveillance. Here a mural in Yarkland, Xinjiang, in 2012 says: "Stability is a blessing, Instability is a calamity." Eric Lafforgue/Art in All of Us/Corbis via Getty Images

The sinicization of religion

The Party, which is officially atheist, has for decades attempted to control religious organizations to maintain its dominance.

Its State Administration for Religious Affairs, set up in 1951, allows five religious organizations to exist under the state's control: a Party-sanctioned form of Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Protestantism, and Catholicism.

The state controls these groups' personnel, publications, and finances. Technically, citizens are free to practise religion freely, as long as their sect is officially sanctioned by the government.

Party officials in 2015 introduced the term "sinicization" into official government lexicon, in which they called on Muslim, Buddhist, and Christian leaders to fuse their religions with Chinese socialist thought.

Roderic Wye, a former first secretary in the British Embassy in Beijing, told Business Insider: "The party has always had trouble with religion one way or another, because often religious activity tends to imply some sort of organization. Once there are organizations, the party is very keen to control them."

But under the presidency of Xi Jinping, the government's crackdown appears to have increased at an alarming scale.

The majority-Muslim Hui people, who are scattered around China, also fear that the government will extend its crackdown to them.

In the northern city of Yinchuan, home to the largest concentration of Hui Muslims in the country, authorities have banned the daily call to prayer because it apparently created noise pollution, the South China Morning Post reported.

One unnamed imam in Linxia, central China, also told Agence France-Presse in July: "They want to secularize Muslims, to cut off Islam at the roots. These days, children are not allowed to believe in religion: Only in communism and the party."

China has also been cracking down on "underground" Catholic churches, such as this one in Jiexi, photographed in March 2018. Andy Wong/AP

Monitored services, censored sermons

The crackdown extends beyond Islam.

Authorities have also targeted Christians outside the state-sanctioned Catholic and Protestant associations by burning Bibles, shutting down churches, and ordering people to renounce their faith, the Associated Press reported.

Some churches allowed to remain open have to install facial-recognition cameras in the building, or risk getting shut down. Party officials censor and add state propaganda to pastors' sermons, Bob Fu, who runs the US rights group ChinaAid, told France24.

In September, authorities in China and the Vatican signed an agreement in which Pope Francis officially recognized seven Beijing-appointed bishops, who had been excommunicated because they weren't approved by the Holy See. Critics said the deal ceded power from the Holy See to the Communist Party.

The loyalties of China's approximately 10 million Catholics are split between the Vatican and the state-supervised Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association. China has about 100 million Protestants, the Financial Times reported.

Monks at the Shaolin Temple raise the Chinese national flag to mark National Day in October 2018. The ceremony marked the second time, since August that the Chinese flag was raised in the temple's 1,500-year history. Yuan Xiaoqiang/Orient Today via Reuters

'No other source of moral or social authority is tolerated'

The Communist Party, keen to maintain its sole grip on power, disapproves of all kinds of grassroots organizations as they are seen to undermine it and disrupt internal stability.

Wye, the former British Embassy official, said China's keenness to exert control over religions is also to limit foreign influence.

"There's always been a concern the Chinese state has had about the extent of foreign influence over religion and the way foreign forces might use to manipulate societal thought," Wye, now an associate fellow at Chatham House, told Business Insider.

"This is part of the wider 'China dream' that Xi Jinping has, to make China big and strong again," he added.

"Whatever political and social development China will take in the future, it is to be decided and promulgated by the Chinese Communist Party, and no other source of moral or social authority is tolerated."